Pennys (my direct relatives and much wider) lived in a number of farms primarily in the Fraserburgh / Peterhead area. It seems they were tenants rather than owners – unless someone can let me know otherwise. The farms where the Pennys lived can be relatively difficult to locate – here is the bigger picture:-
Locations of the farms are in this PDF. Updated 24 January 2025 with an associated extended family tree.
Hallmoss and Newmill are in the Parish of Rathen. St Combs is about 14 milesnorth of Peterhead and about 6 miles east of Rathen. There are several Penny gravestones in the cemetery.
Nether Kinmundy Home Farm is about 4 miles from Longside & about 6 miles west of Peterhead (Mossend or hillend, from the Gaelic, are as close as can be traced for the derivation of “Kinmundy”).
Hallmoss Farm is north-west of Hallmoss, Inverugie, Peterhead – a more extensive enterprise than in the last quarter of the 1700s when Charles Penny farmed there!
Mains of Pitfour Farm is north-west of Mintlaw. A fascinating history of the Pitfour estate, its owners etc. is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitfour_estate.
Other Pennys (several closely related) farmed at Lonmay, Inverallochy, Lenabo, Mintlaw, Strichen etc.
There were some specific “direct line” Penny family connections which are covered in the page – Nether Kinmundy and Lenabo Connections. These stretch across the 1800s right up to my Dad around WW 1.
Information on the geography of “Penny farm territory” – and the history of that “territory” is in this PDF :- Geography and History of Penny Farm Territory using material from the oldroadsofscotland website created by Gerald Cummins with summaries from the Old and New Statistical Accounts for Scotland and links to those Accounts courtesy of Google Books.
An excellent resource for maps of the Fraserburgh / Peterhead district is from John Thomson’s 1832 Atlas of Scotland courtesy of National Library of Scotland at:- https://maps.nls.uk/atlas/thomson/523.html
Return to Penny Line
Courtesy of https://mapcarta.com/W889348175/Map
Norman J Penny - Family 